Sutter Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown's beloved corgi and California's First Dog, died Friday after a bout with cancer, according to the Governor's Office.The Pembroke Welsh corgi was 13 years old, or 91 in dog years.“Sutter passed away peacefully this afternoon with the Governor and First Lady at his side and was laid to rest at the family ranch in Colusa County, where he loved to roam, sniff and play,” Brown spokesman Evan Westrup told the Sacramento Bee...

Thursday, December 29, 2016

The problem of folks claiming some kind of affiliation or faculty position with UCLA is not knew. Sometimes the claimer has had some kind of past affiliation - maybe taught an extension course or volunteered for something. From the Bruin:

A consultant for a pharmaceutical company falsely claimed to be a UCLA professor in a paper about EpiPen pricing. The American Journal of Medicine published thepaperby Leonard Fromer, a former volunteer assistant professor of family medicine, in December that advocated for adding the allergy medication EpiPen to a federal list of preventive medical services...

Patrick Dowling, a professor and the chair of the Department of Family Medicine, said the title of volunteer assistant professor is common for doctors in the community who have a limited role in teaching medical students in the clinic or in group discussions. The department has no documentation that Fromer has taught in the last several years and has tried to contact the doctor, Dowling said. Dowling said that according to Fromer’s original letter of appointment to the volunteer faculty position, Fromer must obtain authorization from the chair of the department for any article he wants to publish in association with UCLA...

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

If you look up "bury the lede" on the web, you will find definitions such as:

Fail to emphasize the most important part of a story or account.*

NPR carried a story about the outsourcing of IT jobs at UC-San Francisco.** Blog readers will know that story is old news - although perhaps not for the IT workers whose jobs are being sent to India via an outsourcing company called HCL. The matter has come up at the public comments component of past Regents meetings and may well do so again in January. However, buried in the NPR story is this revelation:The contract (with HCL) covers all10 University of California schools and that means it could potentially endanger thousands of IT jobs.

Monday, December 26, 2016

From a recently-published working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER):

Abstract: The pool of students in the global economy prepared for higher education and able to pay tuition at U.S. colleges and universities has expanded markedly in the last two decades, with a particularly notable increase among potential undergraduate students from China. Given the concentration of high quality colleges and universities in the U.S., there has been a substantial increase in the demand for enrollment among students from abroad. At the same time, substantial declines in state support, driven by contractions in state budgets, have occurred at public sector universities. For such universities, declines in state appropriations force a choice between increasing tuition levels, cutting expenditures, or enrolling a greater proportion of students paying full out-of-state tuition. In this paper we present evidence showing that a significant set of public universities were able to take advantage of the expanding pool of potential students from abroad to provide a stream of tuition revenue that partially offsets declining state appropriations. Our analysis focuses on the interaction between the type of university experience demanded by students from abroad and the supply-side of the U.S. market. For the period between 1996 and 2012, we estimate that a 10% reduction in state appropriations is associated with an increase in foreign enrollment of 12% at public research universities and about 17% at the most resource-intensive public universities. Our results tell a compelling story about the link between changes in state funding and foreign enrollment in recent years. In the absence of the pool of foreign students, many universities would have faced larger cuts to expenditures and potentially greater increases in in-state tuition charges.Source: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22981

Math Prof. Richard Montgomery of UC-Santa Cruz wrote the item below for the Mercury News:

Over the summer, workmen removed most of the remaining books from our Science and Engineering Library at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Roughly 80,000 books, worth between $2-$6 million were destroyed or shipped off campus to distant storage facilities.In 1990, when I arrived to work at UCSC, I took pride in our Science Library.By 2000 new journals were no longer displayed.By 2010 the journal room was gone, turned into a large study. We could no longer browse new journals.After journals had been vanquished, the next enemy was clear: books.At the beginning of this Fall quarter I entered the library. No books on the first floor. I walked up to the second floor, where the math and physics collection used to be. Nothing. No books.Space. Lots of space. Students scattered around on their devices. Some eating. Some drinking.When my mother died, there was her chair left in the living room, the red chair with tattered holes on the right arm, white stuffing poking through, cigarette marks, sitting in the open sun. The second floor of the library was that chair, that hospital room, cleared out, cleaned, the sun streaming in, empty after the machines had been uplugged.In shock, I went down to talk to a librarian. “What happened to all the books? I’d heard some were left.”He gave me a wan smile. “They’re in the basement.”Down in the basement about half the original collection of math and physics books huddled dejectedly in a corner, valiant survivors.I’ve since found that the phenomenon of shrinking and destroying university research libraries is international. But as we like to say here at UCSC, we are at the vanguard.Our head librarian prefers the word “de-duplicate” to “destroy”, “remove” or “shred”.The rationale behind de-duplification? Space. Empty study space with desks for the flood of 600 additional students UC Santa Cruz was pressured to admit this Fall.How did the library staff decide what books to de-duplicate? Data, analytics, the ubiquitous algorithm, devoid of a human element. If a book had not been touched, according to library data, in the last five years, then it went on their chopping list.This rationality ignores the library’s clients: humans.My friend Gildas, a biblical scholar, went to the Science library last week to consult an important book on ancient technologies. He had consulted the book several times before. Oops! De-duplicated.Like me and many users of libraries, Gildas marks the place from which he takes a book and carefully reshelves it when he is done, saving the library staff reshelving work. The algorithm missed his book and now it is shredded or moldering in a distant storage facility.A copy of Gildas’s book does survive. At UCSF. Its survival now depends, like that of our entire de-duplicated collection, on the kindness of distant librarians.No chance was given to students or faculty to buy the books. Millions of dollars of public property was destroyed. A long-standing and painstakingly collected archive was removed to solve a temporary space problem.The library “lost” the list of the books which it de-duplicated, so we don’t know which among them were rare or important. We are still waiting for the library staff to recover their list.In the meantime: don’t reshelve your books.

Friday, December 23, 2016

As blog readers will know, there have been issues over the years at UC and other public universities about what documents can be obtained through public records requests and what information can be kept private. Now a dispute is occurring involving UC and the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) which operates an electric utility (as well as a water supply utility) in the Imperial Valley.

When the dust settled on the electricity crisis that followed deregulation in California, the state was left with a hodge-podge of institutions and arrangements that had been hastily put together to keep the lights on. Today, various private and public utilities supply electricity under the supervision of CAISO - the California Independent System Operator - which regulates the state grid. CAISO is charged (no pun intended) with seeing that sufficient power is available at all times, thus avoiding the rolling blackouts that accompanied the electricity crisis. [http://www.caiso.com]

The IID and CAISO have been at odds over various matters. As best as yours truly can figure out from some Google-perusing, at least part of the conflict revolves around potential renewable power sources the IID wants CAISO to use. CAISO seems to have an alternative plan that involves widening the grid beyond the state. Litigation by the IID has ensued.* Got it?

Now comes the UC element which involves a public documents request by the IID from UC:

A water and power district east of San Diego is suing the University of California over records related to a legal opinion that supports Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to expand the state power grid across the western United States.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Alameda County, said university officials refused to turn over documents that three law professors relied on to produce the study. The opinion was commissioned in March by the California Independent System Operator, or CAISO, the government nonprofit that manages most of the the grid.

The complaint was brought by the Imperial Irrigation District, a municipal utility that serves about 150,000 people in Imperial County and parts of Riverside and San Diego counties.

Lawyers for the district want a judge to order the university to comply with open-records laws by making the requested documents available for public inspection. According to exhibits attached to the complaint, university officials say they have produced all of the records they are able to release. Spokeswoman Claire Doan said the institution supports the public’s right to access information, but must respect and protect employees’ right to privacy.

The legal opinion released in August helped CAISO promote the plan to expand the state grid into a regional network that would serve up to 14 states, a proposal Brown has pushed as a way to market renewable power across the West.

The irrigation district’s lawsuit says the opinion wrongly downplayed legal issues with California’s ability to follow through on landmark clean-energy policies like the cap-and-trade program and the rule calling for 50 percent of power consumed in the state to come from renewable sources by 2030.

“The records show how three university lawyers — Ethan Elkind, Dan Farber and Ann Carlson — shaped their legal opinions issued to the California Legislature and the public in such a way as to understate the risk to climate change laws if the California Independent System Operator is expanded to include 14 western states,” the complaint says.

Ann Carlson, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles, is listed as lead author of the report. Ethan Elkind of UC Berkeley and UCLA and Daniel Farber of UC Berkeley are listed as consulting professors.

The lawsuit contends that the opinion produced by the scholars was less than independent. It cites a “working outline” CAISO supplied to the researchers when they were hired in March that closely resembles the finished report.

“The arguments and language therein reappeared in substantial part in the final legal opinion,” the suit says.

According to state officials, expanding the grid to more states would save consumers up to $1.5 billion in coming years. It would also boost the use of renewable power by making solar, wind and other climate-friendly energy sources easier to distribute across state lines.

The initial expansion would merge the California system operator with PacifiCorp, a for-profit utility based in Portland, Ore. that serves 1.8 million customers in six states. The company relies heavily on fossil fuels for power, and says it hopes the grid will lessen that reliance.

The legal opinion at issue in the Imperial Irrigation District lawsuit concludes that expanding the grid to additional states would not affect climate-change programs in California.

“Adding PacifiCorp assets to CAISO will not create any new or additional risk of preemption for California’s energy and environmental policies,” it says. “Nor will it alter the constitutionality of those policies.”

The lawsuit against the University of California regents includes pages of exhibits, contending California could lose autonomy on energy policy should the merger go through.

In April, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court limited Maryland’s ability to regulate energy in its service area, given that it’s part of a multi-state grid. In May, Elkind emailed his co-authors to discuss whether they should pay more attention to the Maryland ruling and a similar case in Minnesota.

“Even a small chance that CAISO expansion could call into question California’s renewable policies would be hugely detrimental, and so I wonder if we should more explicitly address potential counter-arguments,” he wrote. “I’m not suggesting we try to game out the politics in this memo, but perhaps we could acknowledge more of the legal uncertainty.”

The final report released in August briefly addressed legal concerns about the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

“To the extent that state environmental laws or policies directly intrude upon or seek to establish FERC jurisdictional rates, they would be vulnerable to a preemption challenge on those grounds,” the finished opinion states.

CAISO, which is not part of the irrigation district lawsuit, defended the legal opinion’s findings and independence.

“This paper evaluates that concern and concludes that having an entity like PacifiCorp join the ISO would not increase federal, i.e. FERC, regulation over the ISO and would not impact the extent to which California may continue to regulate in these areas,” the March outline said.

CAISO spokesman Steven Greenlee said the outline was drafted by in-house lawyers and provided to the independent analysts as a courtesy so they would be aware of the agency’s position.

“To the extent the professors reached conclusions similar to the ISO, this represents an independent validation of those views,” he said.

Advocacy groups watching the proposed expansion are skeptical that federal regulators would permit California to extend its clean-energy policies beyond its borders.

“There are real risks that regional grid expansion could do substantial harm to California by increasing the potential for federal preemption of cutting-edge state policy initiatives,” said Matthew Freedman, an attorney at the Utility Reform Network in San Francisco.

Sierra Club lawyer Travis Ritchie said the benefits would be huge if the expansion is done correctly. It could get rid of dirty power producers like coal and natural gas and promote renewable energy across a dozen or more Western states, he said.

But “regionalization kind of pokes the bear,” said Ritchie, referring to federal regulators at the FERC. “If you are expanding those policies to other states, particularly states that don’t share the same climate goals, you are inviting legal challenges.”

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Facebook's hardware development division on Wednesday announced a new partnership with Harvard, Princeton and 15 other universities intended to allow swifter collaboration on technology research projects.The agreement between Facebook's Building 8* and the universities comes as the social media company seeks to find new revenue streams in virtual reality and artificial intelligence, after the company signaled last month it had begun to hit some advertising growth limits on its network of 1.8 billion monthly active users.Research partnerships between universities and companies typically take nine to 12 months to facilitate, but the new agreement will allow for collaboration on new ideas within weeks, said Regina Dugan, who joined the company in April to run the new Building 8 unit.Dugan did not provide specifics to explain how the partnership will promote a quicker pace of research, but traditional negotiations between universities and companies can often take several months."When curiosity strikes, with this new agreement in place, Harvard researchers can initiate new projects with scientific colleagues at Facebook almost immediately," Isaac Kohlberg, chief technology development officer at Harvard, said in a statement. "This agreement with Facebook recognizes that the most significant, transformative solutions will be informed by university science."Participating universities will receive payment from Facebook, a company spokesman said, declining to specify how much Facebook would pay.Facebook has increasingly sought to find new revenue streams outside its traditional advertising model, but products such as its WhatsApp messaging app and Oculus Rift virtual reality headset currently generate little.Other participating universities include Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, Northeastern University, Rice, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-San Francisco, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Waterloo in Canada.

We noted in a posting yesterday that despite UC prez Napolitano's avoidance of the "sanctuary" word in describing UC's policy regarding undocumented students, at least one California member of Congress nevertheless threatened a cutoff of federal funding. (UC's policy is essentially that UC police won't be engaged in immigration law enforcement.)

Ex officio Regent Tom Torlakson, the state superintendent of public instruction, wants school districts to declare themselves "safe places" for such students, according to a statement issued yesterday.* He was speaking of K-12 districts but would presumably take the same position at the Regents. There may well be discussion of such matters at the Regents' January meeting.

It appears, however, that even if you don't call the announced UC policy anything - the current official posture - you get a hostile reaction from some in Congress. So labeling the policy or not labeling it doesn't seem to matter. In fact, it is unclear how much protection UC can provide since so-called "DREAM" students registered with the federal government in order to regularize their status temporarily. Thus, they are already known to immigration authorities.

UC, apart from the immigration issue, is already potentially in conflict with the incoming administration on the climate change issue. As we have noted, the national/DOE labs - in which UC has a managerial role - have employees who may be threatened, based on their past research. The Trump transition team requested the names of such employees from DOE, a request which was refused by the outgoing Obama administration. But after January 20, DOE will be in other hands.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

We have previously noted in this blog that UC is vulnerable to federal funding cuts, perhaps accounting for UC prez Napolitano's careful non-use of the "sanctuary" word when it came to UC policy on undocumented students. (It may also have accounted for her non-signature on the climate change letter noted in an earlier post today.)

In any case, avoiding use of a particular word doesn't seem to have prevented a threat to UC federal funding. From the conservative Calwatchdog blog:Congressman Dana Rohrabacher last week warned UC President Janet Napolitano that the system’s sanctuary campus polices could jeopardize federal funding for research. The Costa Mesa Republican denounced a recent announcement from UC that campus police would not be cooperating with federal officials in deportation efforts of undocumented immigrants.

“Your commitment to spending scarce resources to finance people illegally present in the United States is unacceptable and a flagrant misuse of taxpayer money,” Rohrabacher wrote. “This is an insult to Americans and legal immigrants who pay your salary.”...

The head of IT for UC has announced a systemwide deal for cybersecurity with a Silicon Valley company called FireEye:

Systemwide deal for cybersecurity

The campuses and health systems together chose a technology partner, FireEye, to assist in modernizing UC’s cybersecurity landscape. After intense negotiations, UC locations can now leverage FireEye’s full portfolio of offerings. Locations also collaborated to determine minimum standards for deployment. This is the power of working together to achieve more for all, in this case, greater protection of the University and its assets...*

According to FireEye's latest (2015) annual report, everything is going great except that it's losing money continually.** But not to worry. What could possibly go wrong? Right?

A letter to President-elect Trump and members of Congress was signed by many university and college leaders concerning climate change and the Paris agreement. The chancellors of UC campuses signed. But there was one missing signature.

Excerpt from letter:

We, the undersigned leaders of higher education institutions throughout the United States, recognize our academic and ethical responsibilities to current and future generations to take aggressive climate action; to reduce our sector’s carbon pollution, to support interdisciplinary climate education, and to continue research that expands our understanding of rapidly changing earth systems. We are committed to developing and deploying innovative climate solutions that provide a prosperous future for all Americans.We join our colleagues in the business and investment communities in supporting the science-based targets outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement...

---Signatories from UC:
Nicholas Dirks, Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley
Ralph Hexter, Acting Chancellor, University of California, Davis
Howard Gillman, Chancellor, University of California, IrvineGene Block, Chancellor, University of California, Los Angeles
Dorothy Leland, Chancellor, University of California, Merced
Kim Wilcox, Chancellor, University of California, Riverside
Pradeep Khosla, Chancellor, University of California, San Diego
Sam Hawgood, Chancellor, University of California, San Francisco
Henry Yang, Chancellor, University of California, Santa Barbara
George Blumenthal, Chancellor, University of California, Santa Cruz
---

No signature (yet):
Janet Napolitano, President, University of California
---

Inside Higher Ed is reporting a legal victory by the Regents concerning two prostate cancer drugs. The sequence of events and the details of the suits and counter-suits are not clear from the article but at least one of the drugs involved appears to have been developed at UCLA. Part of the litigation referenced involved clearing a UCLA faculty member of defrauding a drug company.

A long-running dispute over licensing of prostate cancer drugs has ended in the University of California’s favor.

California’s Supreme Court last week upheld lower court rulings in favor of the University of California Board of Regents. The decision effectively awards the university $32 million in additional licensing income while also resolving contract claims against the regents and confirming a jury verdict clearing a drug inventor of fraud...

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

More than 102,000 high school seniors applied for freshman admission to UCLA for fall 2017, marking the first time the number of applicants reached into six figures, university officials announced Monday.The UCLA applications represent more than half of the record-setting 171,449 applications received by University of California campuses statewide.Of the 102,000 UCLA applicants, 63,400 are California residents, an increase of 7.8 percent compared to the previous year, according to UCLA. The jump is the university's largest year-over-year increase in California applications...
Full story at http://patch.com/california/centurycity/ucla-reaches-new-record-milestone-freshman-applicants

Monday, December 19, 2016

Our previous posting gave you one problem you could forget about. But here is a new one to worry about as a replacement from the Bruin:

Faculty and graduate student parents say poor management and internal tensions at UCLA’s child care centers are affecting their children’s well-being. Some parents said the problems started after Jayanti Tambe, the executive director of UCLA Early Care and Education was hired in February 2015.

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Scott Waugh answered parents’ questions and responded to their concerns in a town hall meeting Dec. 5, which more than 60 people attended. He also commissioned a task force in August that is interviewing between 50 and 70 staff members and parents and will make specific recommendations for action in January.

At the town hall, several parents asked Waugh to place Tambe on administrative leave to ensure there is a transparent investigation process. Waugh apologized to several parents and said he is considering many solutions, but did not specify whether he would place Tambe on administrative leave.

“I appreciate your apology, but I feel like I’ve heard your apologies over and over,” said Isabel Guerrero, a graduate student in public health, at the town hall. “What I would really like is to see is change, and … ideas that you are really implementing as of now.”

ECE has provided early care for newborns and toddlers of UCLA faculty and graduate students for 30 years. Tuition ranges from about $1,800 to $2,200 per month, depending on the child’s age. Many parents who have had children at the child care center for several years said they have loved the center because of the outstanding teachers.

But now, parents say Tambe and other subdirectors have abruptly transferred teachers to different classrooms without considering how it would affect children and created a hostile environment for teachers and families.

The Community Care Licensing Division under the California Department of Social Services has investigated several complaints against ECE...

A little more than a year ago, academia was abuzz about the Yik Yak problem. Yik Yak was (is) a website in which college students say nasty things about sex and about other people. When yours truly looked at it back then for UCLA and vicinity, the website seemed to be mainly the home of horny undergrad males.*Now, according to Inside Higher Ed, the Yik Yak problem seems to be fading away for various reasons. Students are just losing interest.**

So that's one less worry you can forget about. Cheer up. (Or - more likely - you can worry about something else.)

Sunday, December 18, 2016

We are always happy to point to monetary gifts to UCLA that go to knowledge rather than structures. So, from the Daily Bruin:

A UCLA alumnus and son of the namesake of Powell Library donated $5 million to support the work of the university librarian.

Norman Powell’s gift will establish an endowment for the position named in his and his wife’s honor. The university librarian oversees the campus library system and works with campus organizations, philanthropists, corporations and foundations to improve services and support for students and faculty.

University librarian Virginia Steel, who has held her position since 2013, will be the inaugural Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian.

According to a UCLA press release, endowment funds will support the library’s collections, teaching and research support services, and ongoing efforts to ensure its physical spaces and online resources can continue to serve UCLA students and faculty.

“I hope my gift inspires others to make similar gifts,” Powell said in a statement. “The UCLA library cannot sustain its standing as a premier institution and grow without support from people like you and me.”

Powell’s previous donations have helped establish a new data scientist position at the UCLA library and acquire a well-known photography collection.

Powell graduated from UCLA in 1959 with a degree in earth physics and went on to work as a research physicist for Chevron and an executive consultant with British Petroleum. After retiring in 1990, he became an environmental activist with a focus on local open space and conservation issues in Southern California.

Powell Library was named in 1966 after Powell’s father, Lawrence Clark Powell, who served as university librarian from 1944 to 1961.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

UC Riverside Provost Paul J. D’Anieri announced Friday that he would step down from his administrative post, just days after the faculty said it would meet to consider a vote of no confidence in his leadership. Some faculty members believed that D’Anieri — who has served as the university’s chief academic officer and executive vice chancellor since 2014 — had mismanaged a major campus growth plan, failed to adequately consult faculty in hiring decisions, brought too many outsiders into key positions and created a climate of mistrust and fear. Many of those concerns were aired publicly at a packed Academic Senate meeting two weeks ago. More than 100 faculty members subsequently called for a special meeting to consider a vote of no confidence, which was to have taken place early next year.In a message to the faculty and staff Friday, D’Anieri said he recognized wide dissatisfaction with his leadership and significant divides on several issues. “These differences have made it difficult to achieve the level of unity that I believe we need to move forward on our ambitious agenda,” he wrote...

Friday, December 16, 2016

Transition Checklist

Beginning Jan. 1, 2017, UC’s preferred provider organization (PPO) medical plans for employees (Core, UC Care and UC Health Savings Plan) and for retirees (UC High Option Supplement to Medicare, UC Medicare PPO and UC Medicare PPO without Prescription Drugs) will have new administrators for medical, behavioral health and prescription drug benefits. UC has worked to minimize disruptions for members, but there will be some changes to medical and behavioral health provider networks and to pharmacy costs. The steps below can help you prepare for this change:

Confirm your current doctors and other providers (including behavioral health) are in-network. Call Anthem Health Guide or search for your provider on anthem.com/ca/uc.

Check OptumRx formulary and prescription drug costs. OptumRx uses a different formulary than Blue Shield. Your current covered medications will continue to be covered, but the cost of the medications may change. View the OptumRx formulary on optumrx.com/UOCALIF or optumrx.com/UOCALIF2 (for Medicare plans) and use the Optum Price and Save tool to help you identify cost options for your medications. You may want to talk to your doctor about an alternative formulary drug to help you manage your costs. For questions, call OptumRx Member Services.

Request transition assistance. If you are currently receiving medical or behavioral health care from a provider that will not be in-network in 2017, transition assistance may be available for:

Request prior authorization. If you received a prior authorization for a medical or behavioral health service from Blue Shield or Optum, but the procedure or treatment is scheduled after Jan. 1, 2017, you will need to get another prior authorization from Anthem Blue Cross. Call Anthem Health Guide for assistance.

For continuing online access to your Blue Shield claims information from 2016 and previous years, register for an account at blueshieldca.com/uc by Dec. 31, 2016. After this date, you will not be able to register for an account and will need to call Shield Concierge (855-339-9973) for claims information. If you are registered for an account by Dec. 31, 2016, you will have access to your claims and other member information until December 31, 2017.

If you need information about Optum behavioral health claims from 2016 and previous years, call Optum for assistance at 888-440-8225. Optum will continue to provide information and assistance to past UC members when needed, even after Dec. 31, 2016.

A union announced Thursday that University of California workers will strike for five days in January, a move aimed to disrupt operations as students and faculty return from winter break. Teamsters from Local 2010 said that the strike would protest the “numerous violations” of state labor law and unfair practices; they claim insufficient wages to administrative, clerical and support jobs such as elevator operators, plumbers and electricians.

The strike, on Jan. 6-10, appears focused on affecting the functions at UCLA and UC San Diego, where there are medical centers and construction sites. The same union held a 24-hour strike in November on both campuses.

“Skilled trades workers have not had a raise in four years at UCLA, and in two years at UC San Diego,” the union says in a statement.

Teamsters Local 2010 represents 12,000 administrative support workers across the system, including more than 800 electricians, elevator mechanics, plumbers and facilities workers on the two campuses.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Governor Brown - specifically citing his membership on the UC Board of Regents - vows to protect DOE lab employees from political pressure on the climate change issue. His remarks come after a request from the Trump transition for a list of employees involved in climate change research. In previous postings on this blog, we have asked what the Regents plan to do about this matter.*

Gov. Jerry Brown, rallying a room of scientists Wednesday with his most heated rhetoric yet on the topic, suggested California would defy the federal government should President-elect Donald Trump impede the state’s efforts to thwart climate change.

“We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers and we’re ready to fight. We’re ready to defend,” he said to boisterous applause at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco...

He said if the federal government “starts messing with” the state’s renowned science facilities, such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “I am the president of the Board of Regents. I am going to say, ‘Keep your hands off. That laboratory is going to pursue good science.’”...

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Hundreds of people have applied to be the next chancellor of UC Davis. The search advisory committee has reviewed approximately 525 candidates. Some of them applied for the job and others were recommended or identified by the search committee, according to UC Davis. Thirty-two percent of the candidates are women and 28 percent are minorities, according to the UC Davis website. In September, the University of California Office of the President named a committee to find a new chancellor to replace Linda P.B. Katehi...

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Hundreds of electricians, elevator mechanics, plumbers and other skilled-trades workers at UCLA and UC San Diego are planning separate one-day strikes this week to demand higher wages. A 24-hour strike will take place Wednesday at UCLA and on Thursday at UC San Diego, said Teamsters Local 2010, a union that represents nearly 800 skilled-trades workers at both schools. Contracts for the workers at both schools have already expired and they are striking over the universities' refusal to negotiate over back wages, the union said in a statement. The workers' contract at UCLA expired in 2013 and at UCSD in 2015...

News reports today suggest that former Texas governor Rick Perry to head the Dept. of Energy (DOE).* If this info is correct - it has not been confirmed by the Trump transition - it underlines the issue raised in an earlier posting on this blog.** Some of the climate change researchers who may be targeted by the incoming administration are at the DOE labs in which the University of California plays a management role.

So we again ask, what steps are the Regents and UCOP prepared to take to protect such researchers? Will they address this issue at their January meeting?

Monday, December 12, 2016

Every morning, they wake up to catch the AC Transit bus to San Francisco, then return home well into the evening, after a 90-minute, rush-hour commute that can be standing-room-only.But these aren’t your typical commuters battling urban gridlock. They are first-semester freshmen at UC Berkeley, 18- and 19-year-olds who — instead of stumbling a few steps from their dorms to class — are commuting sometimes two and a half hours daily to and from class in an office building in San Francisco.“It’s not that bad,” said Faizan Samad, 18, a physics major from Seattle. “You’ve just got to tough it out.”To meet soaring demand with limited space, UC Berkeley has pushed hundreds of students off campus, with freshmen studying in San Francisco — and even London — and other students living in dorms at neighboring universities.A record 101,650 students vied for a spot this fall at Berkeley, more than applied to Harvard and Stanford combined. Under political pressure to admit more Californians, the University of California last year agreed that its campuses would find a way to educate more undergraduates, and fast — 10,000 more by the fall of 2018.For thousands of students, the benefit was instant: The odds of admission rose at every UC campus. At ultracompetitive Cal, the admission rate for in-state freshmen topped 20 percent for the first time since 2009.After opening its doors wider, UC Berkeley has 1,122 more freshmen and transfer students this fall — a 4 percent increase — and nearly 400 more students than it planned for, as more accepted admission offers than expected, according to official enrollment figures released late last month by the campus.The impact has been instant: The influx of students coincides with the temporary closure of one of the largest buildings on campus, Wheeler Hall, where 29 classrooms and auditorium are out of commission for renovations.With classroom space at a premium, UC Berkeley is holding large lectures in performance halls and event spaces. For the first two weeks of the semester, before some students dropped the class, about 2,000 computer science students learned programming from the seats of Zellerbach Hall, where the Philharmonia Orchestra of London and Sweden’s Cullberg Ballet performed just weeks later.Adding more freshmen and transfer students is important, said student body president Will Morrow. But the rapid enrollment increases, which left little time to build needed classrooms or dorms, he said, “are really pushing the university to its limits.”The surge of undergraduates has created a more pressing concern: a scarcity of affordable apartments — or room for returning students hoping to live on campus. UC Berkeley is building more housing; in the meantime, the campus was able to place about 330 students in newly leased apartment buildings nearby.But the school also is testing out less conventional ideas. This summer, it offered 100 students spots in other colleges’ dorms — at Mills College and Holy Names University, small liberal arts schools in East Oakland that have the extra space.Some freshmen are studying in London, a year or two before they would typically go abroad.And while Cal has long held courses for some first-semester freshmen a few blocks from campus, this year it expanded its Fall Program for Freshmen all the way to San Francisco. About 300 new students take class and study on three floors of a modern high-rise in the financial district — a space owned by UC Berkeley Extension.The university promotes the program on a website that boasts “The city is your classroom” superimposed over a postcard view of the San Francisco skyline, complete with the iconic Golden Gate Bridge.“You got into Berkeley — congrats!” the plug continues. “But why stop there when you can add a semester in San Francisco to your college experience?”In reality, many of the students say, it has mostly added a hellish commute...

Nowadays, smartphones and other devices can make audio or video recordings. If you are an instructor, you should be aware of the following:

California
Education Code Section 78907

The use by any person,
including a student, of any electronic listening or recording device in any
classroom without the prior consent of the instructor is prohibited, except as
necessary to provide reasonable auxiliary aids and academic adjustments to
disabled students. Any person, other than a student, who willfully violates
this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. Any student violating this
section shall be subject to appropriate disciplinary action. This section shall
not be construed as affecting the powers, rights, and liabilities arising from
the use of electronic listening or recording devices as provided for by any
other provision of law.

Of course, you can give permission for such recording. If you have no objection, you could announce in the class that recording is allowed. Or you could give permission on request. Keep in mind that such recordings will likely also pick up statements by students asking questions or answering questions in class. Note that the education code makes allowance for students with disabilities who might need to use some kind of recording device.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

A state appeals court says the University of California Board of Regents acted legally in allowing unauthorized immigrants living in the state to pay the same tuition levels as other residents and to get financial aid.

State lawmakers had voted in 2001 to grant in-state tuition to all students, regardless of immigration status, at all of California’s public colleges and universities. But because of UC’s independent status under the state Constitution, the legislation applied only to fees at California State University and community college campuses. The regents, UC’s governing body, then voted to take the same step for students at their campuses who had attended high school in California and had applied to legalize their immigration status.

Fewer than 1 percent of the students at all three institutions were unauthorized immigrants eligible for those lower costs, according to a legislative staff report. At UC, students from California currently pay $12,294 in tuition and fees, while out-of-state students pay $38,976...